


Swim Said the Mama Fishie, Swim if You Can

by Wirrrn



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-26 12:01:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16681246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: Shortly after the events of X2, something... calls... to Scott Summers, pulling him back to the dam.  Logan follows him, to keep him safe from himself. But all is not what it seems under the quiet, black waters of Alkali Lake, and something is awake. And very, very hungry.





	1. A Certain Stretch of Flooded Earth

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

Water.

It stretched to all points of the compass, a vast, unbroken sheet of slate grey- though in places it shone silver, where the early afternoon light bounced like phantom stones being skipped; and white, where choppy waves foamed and broke over strange, hidden objects just beneath the silent surface.

Only in a few areas do these bulky forms protrude above the seemingly natural waves- satellite dishes, surveillance cameras and concealed, algae-covered machine gun nests revealing the lake for the flooded military base that it is.

That it was.

Broken fingers of concrete slabs, reaching jaggedly to the bright sky for either help or vengeance.

Twisted spines of steel and iron girders, slapped into ludicrous modern art by the initial wall of water.

Screaming, drowned mouths that were once stairwells, leading nowhere into water-logged throats of half-sunk, mildewed corridors, trod now only by crustaceans, newts, the occasional larva of a particularly stubborn freshwater insect.

-Wolverine's keen vision picks out movement in the heat-haze miasma of the far distance, and he soon spots a fish eagle swooping from the naked sky like the juggernaut of some serene yet bloody god, to rip a bullfrog, screaming, from the lake's womb with its talons. 

The bird stots its head around, and baleful amber eyes meet unreadable brown.

Whether something is exchanged in the glance -a nod, an acknowledgment between two top killers- is unclear, but the one that flies shrieks defiantly across the waves before the one who walks like a man breaks the gaze and moves back into the concealing undergrowth, his own claws aching in sympathy -though for hunter or hunted, he cannot say.

Logan turns as his Field Leader finishes powering down the Blackbird and walks down the steps of the gangway. The patch of dry ground they've managed to land on is a clay deposit very rich in iron

(a perfect picnic nook for Magneto)

and the soil burns a ferocious ochre in the sun, bouncing some of its glare back on the younger mutant as he disembarks and making his upper body and face as red as his gaze. He seems a fallen angel from some perverse and beautiful circle of Hell.

Logan knows without having to think on it that the red soil will play havoc

-no offense to Alex-

with Scott's already red vision, and has moved up next to the American with his arms spread in a catching stance even as Scott's crimson gaze misjudges the distance between foot and earth and he falls.

Scott allows himself a moment to enjoy being held in the wiry strength of the clawed mutant's arms, then extricates himself with a muttered thank-you and a disdainful kick at the ground.

(he misses)

"Logan; How does it look?"

The older mutant's eyes flick to the chilled depths keeping their secrets before him. "-Wet, Bub."

The merest chain rattle from the ghost of a smile haunting Scott's lips. "Aside from that. And I'm warning you, Wolverine, say 'cold' and I will not be held responsible for my actions."

Logan snickers. "-They day you ain't responsible for yer actions, Cyke, is the day I get an all over body wax. But there ain't no signs of any... disturbance."

He is trying for another smile from the younger mutant, but worry has chased Scott away, and he is all business, all Cyclops, again. He nods curtly and scans the flooded base with hidden eyes in a closed face.

Logan sighs to himself, but moves up beside him anyway. "-What ya hopin' to find? Muddy footprints? A note scrawled on a wall, somewhere? Her-"

(here he almost says 'her corpse jammed in a sluice gate?' but bites it off and murders it as it comes up unbidden on his tongue. Brief taste of copper waxes and wanes)

"-favourite perfume on the air, maybe?"

Cyclops shakes his head not moving his eyes from the water. "No, nothing as- overt; But *something*..."

After a moment of careful consideration, Logan reaches out a hand and gently squeezes the American's shoulder. 

"-Cy... Scott; it's been three months, Scott. Yer need to let this alone, now."

"I can't-" 

"-Yer know nothing could have made it out of there when that dam burs-"

Scott whirls on the Canadian, a look on his face somewhere between agony and entreaty. "But the dreams, Logan! Every night for a fortnight, always the same. It could be... some kind of message!" 

He wonders if the notion sounds as ridiculous out loud to Logan as it does now to him, but continues. He has to. "It must be! Even Charles..."

"-Scott." No-one who had witnessed the berserker, killing rage of the clawed and howling *thing* wearing his face during Stryker's attack on the mansion, not even the students, would have thought Wolverine capable of such gentleness in his voice, his manner. "-Chuck just doesn't want to see yer hurtin'."

Another pause, then older mutant flips a mental, metal finger at propriety, and says the rest of the sentence that seems lodged in his throat, like a

//surgical saw//

burr.

"-None of us do." 

His other hand joins the first on the taller mutant's shoulders. "-We're just happy yer back to airin' proper dreams in that thick skull of yers, instead of the nightmares."

Scott finds himself astonished, humbled, touched and flattered, all at the same time. For once he's actually glad of the large visor obscuring the more flexible parts of his face, as he has no idea what emotion to put on it. 

When he slides a hand up on his own shoulder to cover one of Logan's, the warm feeling in his chest migrates to his stomach and threatens to go lower. Knowing from an experience

(or two)

with Angel that the uniform hides nothing, and unsure of how welcome his body's reaction will be

-even, perhaps especially, to himself-

the American falls back on defense, albeit a lighter toned one this time.

"How do you know I've been having nightmares?"

Wolverine shifts on his feet as those visored eyes fall on him, blinkered yet unblinking. He fancies he can even feel their heat crawling over his face like the dry, sand-warmed coils of some desert reptile, and wonders if his face is being redly marked in its stead.

"-A little bird told me."

"Mmhhmm. A cold climate bird, by any chance?"

"Hey, you can hardly blame Frosty fer hearin' ya; he's got the room right next to yers and from what he tells me, when yer scream yerself awake, you give Siren a run fer her money."

"Said the pot to the kettle! I have it on good authority that Marie's white streak is actually the result of her coming to rescue your hairy butt whenever *you* howl in your sleep, and *she's* right at other end of the hall!"

Both men glare at each other for a moment, then, unable to keep up the pretense, break into broad grins and chuckles. 

Greatly daring, Scott continues. "I'm pleased that Bobby feels he can talk to someone about things, even if it is you; God knows he must have been desperate to get things off his chest to turn for emotional support from someone named after a weasel on steroids."

The amused gleam in the Wolverine's eyes is tempered by sunlight flashing on his strong, square teeth.

"Yeah, well it ain't my fault the Snowman picked me as his own personal... shit, Cyke, what's the male equivalent of an Agony Aunt?"

"You've been trying to get me to say 'Uncle' for months, Wolverine; it's not going to happen."

Logan whuffs amusement. "Cute, Bub. But hey, for whatever reason, Bobby chose to come to me to sort things out, and I'm gonna respect that."

"Good to see you've finally stopped being scared and started opening up to each other."

"-Me, or the students?"

"Yes."

"-Thin ice, Scott." But the words have a grin in their lining.

"Speaking of which, how is Bobby doing?"

Logan leaned back against a drowned and denuded tree. 

"-He's good. Pretty much over the whole Rogue thing, now. Marie is too, and they're still best o' pals, which is great. Both of them realize they were jus' young, foolin' round a bit. 'Sides, even Marie heard the rumours about Bobby n' the Firebug."

"Is he-?"

"-Still can't get him to talk about it, much. He's hurtin' that John left with Magneto, yeah, but I reckon it's because he knows that John left him *for* Magneto"

"Yes; Kurt told me there seemed to be something between Eric and St John."

"Tell me about it; You could power Cerebro a decade on the currents those two were generatin'. Bobby saw it too, of course, and he's not happy about bein' jilted." 

Logan closes his eyes, enjoying the sun on his face, and smiles.

"-Threatened ter give Lensherr a *real* case of blue balls if they ever cross paths again."

Scott starts to smile back, then his inner Field Leader kicks in. "But he wouldn't, right?"

Logan opens his eyes slowly, like a lizard on a fence, and regards the other man. "-Bobby? Nah. Allerdyce was always close ter the edge, a tad, well-"

"Inflammatory?"

"-Thanks, yeah. But Bobby? He's a sweet kid." 

The clawed mutant stretched until his back popped, then nudged Scott in the ribs with a thick finger.

"-'Sides, like I told him; if he really wants ter tick off Magneto n' Pyro both, he should just bust a nut with Chuck."

"Logan!"

The Canadian is vastly amused as the visible parts of Scott's cheeks and ears burn a ruddy pink whilst he desperately tries not to imagine one of his favourite students and the man he regards as a father coupled in that way.

Eventually, Scott regains control of his complexion and leans back against the tree himself

(after first making sure that the drowned roots and cracked bolus are strong enough to support them both)

shoulder to shoulder with the other mutant.

//This is nice. Probably the longest conversation I've had with Logan, *definitely* the weirdest, but...nice//

"Logan?"

"-Yeah, Bub?"

Scott swallows, suddenly unsure. "Feel free to tell me to fuck off if I'm overstepping, but has Bobby ever, well, come onto y-"

Logan nods. "-Couple of times."

This time the red flush is exactly the same colour as the lens of the visor. "Oh. Right. Well, it's none if my business anyway, I'll butt out. Um, put a sock in it. Ah, that is..."

"-Nothin' happened, Scott."

"Oh." A pause, then "...Why not?"

A chuckle. The Canadian has snicked his claws out and is absently scratching at the wood he feels beneath his fingers.

"-I told him to sort out his feelin's for Allerdyce first, then knock on me door if he's still offerin'. My life's fucked up enough as it is; I really don't need to become the proverbial 'other woman."

"So you are... attracted... to Bobby?"

Logan snorts. "-Damn straight! Or not straight, I guess" He chuckles again. "-I know you only see red through that thing, Cyke, but your eyes *work*, right? The things I could do to warm Drake's ass up.."

Scott, uncomfortable, is threatening to become Cyclops again. Logan frowns.

"-Scott? What did I do wrong? I thought we were having us an honest-to-goodness bonding moment here? What's up?"

The taller mutant looks at him, searching. "I... Logan, I thought..." 

He shakes his head. 

"... Forget it; just a stupid dream. Like Charles' ever-optimistic visions of harmony between us and the humans."

Logan suddenly looks distraught and his lips drain of colour. "-Scott? Are *you* interested in Bobby? Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't know! And here I am prattlin' on about how gorgeous he is like the world's biggest fuckwad! I'm so s-"

A flash of movement, and suddenly Scott is only mere inches from Logan, whose entire field of vision has filled with dark, gleaming rose and the crackling roil of crimson lightning.

"God, Wolverine. Sometimes you are So. Fucking. Dense."

"-What are you talkimmmmph-"

-Scott's mouth crashes against Logan's with a force that makes his concussive blasts seem like a friendly pat on the back. The Canadian's own lips go slack with shock for an eternal second- then drop open wider and with a whole new emotion behind them, letting Scott's tongue play with his own and he kisses back.

Logan's thick stubble catches on the barely perceptible growth at Scott's fresh-shaven jaw; their faces rasp together, sandpaper-sharkskin in a primordial sea of prehistoric heat and chemical fusion. Scott continues to kiss his way down the other mutant's body- his neck, his broad chest, his stomach-peeling the black leather of the uniform open and away as he goes and exposing more tan, hirsute flesh to both the chill air and his own ministrations.

Logan throws back his head and howls at the heat-whitened sky in a reasonable facsimile of the creature that names him, as Scott takes a hardened nipple bud between his lips and teeth, caressing the coarse hair around the other with long, musical fingers. He plants kiss after kiss in the humid dip of the navel, buries his nose in the prickly, Rorschach supernova of black hair that protrudes from the waist of the older mutant's pants. 

Inhaling, he breathes in salt, musk, the heady funk of male arousal and a hint of metal aftertaste, as though he is biting down hard on the tines of a fork.

Logan's breathing, never irregular no matter how much he exerts himself, is choppy and shallow as Scott falls to his knees before him. He has to close his eyes to stop himself coming here and now, but when the young American rubs that exquisitely chiseled face against Logan's thick, jutting erection, the feel of those lips

//GodgodgodgodgogoOHgod//

the cold plastic and metal visor frame coupled with the odd not-heat of the quartz visor

against the juddering, purpled head of his cock sends him roaring over the edge with a hoarse, cracking scream as he pumps jets of thick semen all over Scott's upturned face and visor. Scott digs his fingers into the wet, clay loam and comes hard in his pants.

-Logan is mostly naked anyway, so it takes only a moment to shrug off the rest of his uniform and pull the young American down on the ground, flush with him. Scott smiles and tangles their legs together, whilst Logan throws his dog-tags over one shoulder and gently shifts the younger mutant in his arms until Scott's head is nested on the sweat-dampened hair of his chest.

He reaches down and taps Scott on the head. "-Bub?"

"Logan?"

"-Why didn't yer tell me?"

Scott rolls a bit, until he can look his lover in the eye without kinking his back. "About how I felt?"

"-Nah, about Ororo changin' her wigs! Of course how ya felt!"

A smile against firm, warm skin. "I did."

At Logan's raised eyebrow, Scott strokes his stubbled jaw and continues. "After Lady Liberty, when we all thought you were dyi- when you wouldn't wake up? I realized how much I... Every night after that, I went down to the Med Lab, told you how much I needed you, held your hand, yelled at you to open your eyes."

"-Anyone catch you?"

"Bobby walked in on me, well-us, once. And I think Charles knew, after. I was broadcasting pretty loud, and he *was* just in the next bed. Ironic, that the only person I managed to hide it from was Jean."

"-And me."

"Yes. You too." Logan tightens his hug and Scott smiles. "I had hoped you'd remember, but what can I say? You were as muscle-brained as always. Then you left and I thought I'd blown it- don't say a word, Wolverine."

A feral grin.

"And after you came back, well, first Stryker then... Jean. It was never right. I just couldn't find a moment."

"-Well, we're here now, right? Better latent than never."

A rough, fighter's hand, oddly cool at the fingertips, slides into Scott's uniform, over his heart, and eases it open to make way for lips that were much warmer.

"Yesssss" Scott moans, though whether he is agreeing to Logan's observation is debatable.

Logan lets his hand wander lower, though his mouth is content to stay where it is, for now.

"-Scott?"

"Mmm?"

"Can I get in you? Be insi... *FUCK ME*!"

Suddenly, it is though Scott is embracing an iron maiden, as the Canadian tenses all over, naked body so rigid in threat stance Scott fancies he can *see* the Adamantium clenching and unclenching beneath the skin.

Scott's hand has automatically found the side of his head, and he scans the immediate area for a threat in a move that is as second-nature to him as breathing and talking. He sits up, and the upper part of his uniform collapses empty into his lap like a shucked skin.

"'Logan? What is it?"

The older mutant has gone markedly pale and has positioned himself in front of Scott. Three distinct slits have opened in between the knuckles of each of his hands and an uncertain inch or so of blade bobs at each, like the pulsating sting of a baffled wasp.

"-Dunno" comes the stage-whisper reply. "-Thought I saw something movi- *JESUS*!"

Across the water, a crumbling, sodden, ruined part of of this base that Logan finds familiar- though whether from his two-month old trip here with Lensherr and Xavier's briefly combined forces, or less-definite time in his murky past

("How long has it been, Wolverine? Fifteen years?")

He is not really sure, until he sees the chains in one section of the wall, still fixed where Magneto's cellular songs had bound them. No sign of the man they had ensnared, though. Long-drowned and rotted away, like this fortress of his.

-Someone is watching them from the flooded stairwell. Someone standing far enough back in the dark waters to be mostly lost to ill-defining shadows.

As the two men look, the same flickering movement that caught the Canadian's eye to begin with is repeated -and this time he and Scott both gasp. 

The distant figure briefly darts out from beneath the stairwell, into the afternoon light, flips up with considerable gymnastic skill to bask on the stairwell roof, in the sun.

It turns in their direction. It waves at them.

It tosses its long hair.

Its long, red hair. Shining like molten copper, even at this distance.

"Oh my God."

TBC...

 

=====


	2. Dybbuk

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

"Oh My God."

Logan winces as his lover's shocked fingers dig hard into the flesh of his shoulder. "Lo? is it-"

The older mutant shades his eyes against the glare. "-Can't tell, Scott. They ain't keepin' still. Like they're teasin' us."

"Isn't that one of our uniforms?"

Logan peers again at the capering, black-clad figure. "-Could be... hair's definitely red, though, but I can't fix a gender from here. There's some optical gear in the Blackbird, Scott, we could..."

"No, we might lose them. Her. Got to be her..." Scott suddenly blanches. "Lo? What if she saw us? What if she was watching when we were...?"

Logan is shaking his head. "-It can't be her, Scott. You know that."

"Then who?"

Across the water, the strangely prancing figure seems to tire of taunting them. It gives a final wave, then flips back down into the flooded stairwell, dives, and is gone.

A shrug. "-Only one way to find out, Bub"

Logan leans over, takes Scott in his arms and kisses him, deeply. "Whatever happens, Bub; I don't regret this."

He stands, brushes grass and soil from his naked body and dives straight into the still floodwaters.

Moments of silence from the cobalt depths, then Logan breaches the surface, about seven feet away from shore and Scott, treading water vigorously. Water plasters that wild hair flat to his scalp, pours down the muscular chest, sends tributaries down the stomach to the swell of hair that just begins to flume outwards before disappearing beneath the water line and being lost to the deep blue waters.

Scott feels as though the lightning behind his eyes has been diverted, plugged straight into the muscle of his crotch to shoot through the veins of his suddenly heavy cock.

Logan grins at him, splashes chill water in his direction.

"C'mon Scott; whoever it is ain't gonna wait forever. Yer ain't got anythin' I haven't seen before."

Scott rolls his eyes, realizes for probably the millionth time that the derisive gesture is hidden behind the visor and so lost on the intended recipient, and sighs. But the tentative, answering smile on his face continues to built as he peels off the rest of his clothes and dives into the dam water with his Canadian... friend?

* * * 

Despite the distance of the ruined buildings and the freezing cold of the water, it doesn't take the two Mutants long to reach the drowned stairwell where they'd glimpsed the capering figure.

Given his unsurpassed skill at fighting and the masculine grace with which he carried himself through his day, Scott is somewhat surprised to discover that Logan is, at best, a mediocre swimmer.

Scott cleaves the lake surface with long, sure movements, his economy of motion and precise, mathematically perfect strokes rendering the cumbersome drag from the awkward

(though thankfully watertight)

visor, practically non-existent.

Logan's strokes however, even taking into account his shorter limbs, are of a style that the American at his most generous can only call "choppy". Also, the older mutant has serious buoyancy issues. All the Adamantium gripping those bones in a molecular bear-hug weighed his lover down so much that only his head and neck, a hint of shoulder, were visible.

And there was an uncharacteristic hesitation on Logan's part- possibly due to the fact that, as near as Scott can calculate, death by drowning would be the only thing that the rapid-healing couldn't compensate for. Drowning would kill even the Wolverine stone-dead.

All these factors lend the feral mutant a spasmodic, jerky swimming style that is only a step or two up from the fundamental dog-paddle affected by his namesake in the weasel family.

However, Logan makes up in dexterity what he lacks in finesse,

//as always// Scott thinks, fondly-

and the Canadian is still gamely splashing along about thirty feet behind him as Scott grips the torn away hasp of a rusting metal notice

(which somewhat alarmingly reads "DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE")

and hauls himself, gleaming and wet in the afternoon warmth, onto the concrete rise.

Scott turns and waves to Logan, then arches his back, rocks on his haunches and waits for the other mutant to catch up.

(And if whilst stretching his long body in the languid light he displays his prominent arousal to the Canadian, well, perhaps he'll have incentive to swim faster)

-A skittling, scuttling shuffle-hop from the dark stairwell behind Scott, followed by a loud splash.

He whirls. "Hello?"

-Movement, sly but quick, in the depths of the sodden tunnel, perhaps fifty feet away.

Peering down the tunnel, Scott can see nothing but shadow. 

*Red* shadow.

He curses the visor.

"Hello?" He feels self-conscious and stupid, not just for calling out to what is probably a raccoon. The scared little boy deep down in him knows that he's just alerted the Boogeyman that dinner's ready.

He moves into the tunnel a pace or two, water sucking with a fetishist's fluidity at his ankles. The afternoon sun passes into shade as he moves beneath the stairwell roof. He shivers- mostly from the cold.

Mostly.

"-Scott?"

For a moment he is sure his heart has stopped. Then the voice calls again and he realizes it is Logan, calling from behind him.

"-Scott? Where are ya?"

Logan's voice sounds a lot *further* behind him than it ought to. Surely the Canadian isn't hailing him from the lake?

The thought of Wolverine singing to him from the depths like some testosterone-laden Siren, luring him into perilous waters, is almost enough to make Scott laugh.

Almost.

Deep down though, some rapidly fogging part of his mind is anything but merry. It twitches feebly in its slumber and tries to catch his fading attention.

//It's not *Logan* luring you... He sounds far away because you've just zombie-walked *halfway down the tunnel*! Something's lulling you into-//

Scott shakes his head as though a bothersome mosquito circles it. A dreamy smile test the corners of his lips and decides to settle there. 

The young mutant simply stops listening to the warning voice in his head. And to the faint, increasingly frantic voice, now yelling, *outside* it.

"-Scott? C'mon, answer me! Are you in troub-"

//Of course I'm not in trouble// the American thinks, his brain roiling over slowly, like cooling lava //Jean's here with me...//

He wades forward, through water that now comes up to his hips.

"-Scott? where are ya? Talk to me Sc-"

"...SCOTT..."

She

//It//

rises from the water ahead of him, like some wondrous mermaid

//Kraken//

smiling at him in with that full, pouting mouth

//lipless, suppurating//

as she tosses back her fiery hair

//sparse, fungal hyphae-spikes//

to one side of her porcelain

//scarecrow//

complexioned cheek.

"Jean!" says Scott's mouth, even as his dwindling awareness screams at him otherwise. "I knew I'd find you here."

He takes her hand in his, and squeezes. Both their forced, perfect smiles fade for a moment as his fingers sink into the flesh of her hand up to the first knuckle, but she soon beams at him beatifically again.

"...SCOTT" she purrs "...MY LOVELY, LIVELY SCOTT"

She leans forward to kiss him, one hand pressed to her delicate forehead to stop her face sliding off the bone and into the cool, black water.

* * * * 

TBC...

 

=====


	3. Troglobite

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

"-Where are ya?! Answer me?"

Logan bellows again, tossing his head from side to side to scan his environment for traces of the other mutant. Sheets of water fly off him in all directions as his skittish muscles shiver and roil with the urge to gut something, to find his friend.

The naked, drenched mutant suddenly stops and sniffs the air. His claws slide out without his bidding and, needing something to rend, he slashes at the air with a vicious

-SSSZZZZWWWIIIIP!-

That takes out a large chunk of concrete from the stairs with its follow-through arc. The small rain of debris into the water triggers another volley of sly, clacking movements from the depths of the tunnel. But this time Logan does not call out.

The smell is stronger. And Scott, even if he wasn't always so fresh and clean that his personal hygiene bordered on an obsessive-compulsive disorder, would *never* smell like that.

//Long Dead corpses poorly preserved in formalin dry frogspawn roadkilled rattlesnake sour licorice mildew on old books dentists office butchers shop oiled surgical steel//

Another wave of it hits his sinuses like an olfactory sledgehammer and he drops to a crouch and snarls, the bizarre cocktail of scents- so mismatched, and yet so clearly coming from the same source- going straight to the fight or flight area of his psyche. 

And he's never been one to flee.

Whatever it is in the deep dark of the tunnel ahead, carefully moves again. He sees what *might* be a head

(though it seems *wrong*- lumpy and far too large)

turn in his direction and knows he has been seen, even before the coarse cackle and another scent, this time deliberately *wafted* in his direction.

(Ozone. Leather.)

//Scott//

He is back on his feet and charging down the tunnel with a speed that surprises even him. It *definitely* surprises who or whatever is holding Scott, as with a whispered hiss and a clanging splash, his quarry races off down the tunnels ahead, taking Scott with it. As Logan pursues them, roaring, two things occur that make him even more confused and worried for his lover than before.

The first is the knowledge that, based on the sounds they're making, his unknown assailant

//Toad? No...//

is fleeing from him not along the flooded tunnel floor but along the *ceiling*.

The second is the flash-quick moment when he catches a glimpse of what he is pursuing. 

Scott is dangling, limp and boneless as a rag-doll. In the greyish witch-light of the tunnels, he looks very pale and very young

Holding the mutant tightly, turning now to look down the tunnel, caught in the sudden sparks from a Wolverine-claw-on-wall, is a young girl -no more than eight.

She clings impossibly to the ceiling of the tunnel with one hand and foot, impossibly supporting the limp Cyclops with the other.

It's a little girl, and her eyes are odd 

(one is blue, one is brown)

and her face is black from frostbite and she sneers at him and starts to *change*... 

(that wan little cherub-face darkens and elongates, *sharpens*; those baby-fat hands melt like wax tapers into elongated, ragged points) 

and she crabwalks down the tunnel roof into a mould-hung drainage culvert, shoves Scott's unconscious body through it brutally before her, then scuttles inside it with him and is gone.

TBC...

* * * *


	4. Interlude

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,   
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,   
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful   
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

INTERLUDE:

 

Hundreds of miles away. The Xavier School for Gifted Children. Empty of floodwater and terror, giving us a moment's respite.

...The room Scott and Jean used to share. Jean is still dead and Scott has a room of his own -between Bobby Drake and Sam Guthrie, and Jamie Madrox, Jamie Madrox, Jamie Madrox and, sometimes, Jamie Madrox. 

Their old room stands empty, but is clean and dust free. Ororo sends a crisp Spring breeze through it every other day.

Empty the room may be, but *something* stirs in the air over the bed. Not quite a wind, not quite a flame, not quite a voice that sighs

~ssssssssssssssscccotttttttttttttttttttt~

A flash like sunlight glimpsed through an eagle's wing, then the room is still...

...Bobby Drake hisses through clenched teeth and digs bare feet into the tanned muscle of Piotr's lower back, urging the older boy deeper inside him. Piotr grunts gutturally in the affirmative and redoubles his efforts, burying his sweat-slick grin against the side of Bobby's neck as he thrusts harder and faster into the younger mutant's preternaturally cool, but tight and pliant asshole. 

Bobby throws his head back, feeling his face pull into the rictus of approaching climax. He tells himself to dwell on how good the Russian's cock feels pistoning in his ass, not how it is thicker, but shorter, than St John's. Coming with a spasm that freezes the sweat on both his and Piotr's bodies into a thin sheet, he hopes that soon Logan and Mr Summers will buy a clue about how they feel and just fuck already; then perhaps Mr Summers will wean his Canadian friend off those awful cigars.

Smoking sucks.

...Charles has parked his chair by the great bay windows in the attic that he sometimes visits to pick over mementos of a time when things between he and Eric were more primal. Less confusing. 

He had intended to let the spectacular view of the grounds inspire an article on Mutants, Society and Teratophobia he has been asked to write for Time magazine. However, a combination of the bright Spring sun shining on him through the warming glass and the scent of Eric still clinging to a pile of old sweaters in the corner has sent Charles off into a doze.

Suddenly, his placid face becomes angular with fear and puzzlement. He arcs in the chair as though it has been plugged into a wall socket, thin, broomstick-legs spasming as they try, uselessly, to run. He rips himself free of clawing slumber with a gasp of

"~Scott!"

And another, far less welcome name is crawling up the folds of his brain, the same way the ...creature... who bears that name crawls up the sides of walls.

//Oh God// he thinks //Jason... Jason, tell me the two of us didn't wake It up...//

(find the Mutants, Professor; Find *all* the Mutants)

//Oh God, I think we did...//

and Charles' mouth is suddenly very dry.

TBC

 

* * * * 

 

=====


	5. Yurei

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE)

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

* * * * 

"-Scott!"

Back at the Alkali Dam, or what's left of it. Logan has wasted precious minutes frantically duck diving into the chest-deep water in search of a pipe or grate that might lead him to wherever the culvert was going, the drainage culvert where the little-girl-who-isn't has taken Scott Summers.

But even if there was a door with a flashing neon sign reading "THIS WAY TO KIDNAPPED LOVER", Logan wouldn't have seen it. The water is already a deep blue, and the shadows of the tunnel have made it such an abyssal black it might have been ink shot from the maw of the leviathan mother of all squids.

The Canadian has abandoned trying to search for a solution underwater and is now fifty feet up the wall, almost at the drain. He reaches out his hand again

-SNIKT!-

and embeds his claws in the mould-blighted concrete, hauling himself painfully up the sheer surface by using the unbreakable Adamantium as impromptu mountaineering spikes.

The claws may well be unbreakable, but his hands are not, and putting his full weight on his fingers is causing the flesh of his hands to tear *away* from their metallic bones. Logan estimates he has about twelve seconds to make the final few feet to the drain before the last few tendons and sinews give way and send him plummeting back down to that black water again.

The Canadian roars in fury and pain and *springs* the last few feet vertically upwards, flicking the claws out to scrabble quickly at the wall and boost him up, before embedding them in the drain even as his fingers finally give out. Anchored to the floor of the drain, he hauls the rest of his body up and safely into the cramped and stinking-to-high-heaven culvert and lies there for a few moments, panting and swearing, whilst his hands knit back together again.

After a minute or so, tendons and ligaments are reconnected. Logan looks at his hands with a satisfied grunt and visualizes sinking them up to the elbows in the child-thing that has dared to touch *his* Scott.

The culvert is not long- no more than ten feet- and after a few seconds of sliding through muck and grease and a small army of cockroaches and isopods that try in vain to nibble through his quick-healing skin, the naked and bloody mutant bursts free from the pipe and into a large, high-vaulted room, claws extended, snarl feral and ready to tear anything not Cyclops shaped into its component parts with a song on his lips.

"...YOU TOOK YOUR TIME..."

Wolverine whips around a fraction of a section too late and to his surprise, finds himself backhanded across the face and flying the length of the room to land in a crumpled heap some sixty feet away.

Rolling into a crouch, Wolverine looks up. They are in the huge, circular ruins of the room that housed Stryker's 'Mark II Cerebro'. 

Huge sheets of corroding metal are lying haphazard all over, many of them dangling precariously over a sheer drop to the bottom of the shaft, whistling a mile or so below. 

Wolverine has landed on one of these large metal sheets. It groans under his weight, but holds. 

Just.

Scott's nude, unconscious body has been placed, quite deliberately, on the exact centre of another such sheet of Cerebro wall, approximately fifty feet from the Canadian. This platform is much less secure and looks as though it barely holds *Scott's* weight. If Logan were to leap onto it...

"... YES, QUITE AN INTERESTING DILEMMA, ISN'T IT LOGAN? I FIND IT FASCINATING ON A SCIENTIFIC LEVEL..."

Wolverine gasps. 

Crawling down and crouching in the centre of the metal wall above Scott, she hangs like some sort of macabre spider.

-Jean Grey.

She is upside down and hanging from the wall's surface by her feet as she tenderly stroke's Scott's unconscious

-and unvisored-

face with pallid, bloody hands. 

She combs the long, hanging red curtain of her hair out of her upside down face, smiles an inverted smile at Logan. 

"...YOU WANT HIM, COME AND GET HIM, *BUB*!"

 

TBC...


	6. The Man Behind the Mask

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

* * * *

Wolverine growls, low in his throat. She looks like Jean, but the voice is weird- a sibilant stage whisper, like two Komodo dragons rubbing against each other before they either fight or fuck.

He inhales

(Corpses. Licorice. Surgical steel)

and shakes his head. "-You ain't Jeannie."

The red-head shakes with laughter and spins around on the wall again. When she faces the right way up, Jean has gone and the little girl Logan saw on the way in is facing him again.

"-Who the fuck are you?"

A shimmer, and it is Stryker clinging to the wall now.

"...WHO DO YOU WANT ME TO BE?"

The Strykerthing leaps from the wall -less spider now than spidermonkey- and when it lands on the balls of its feet some distance away it is Cyclops who stands before him. 'Scott's' face is visorless but the eyes are closed, probably, Logan realizes, because this pretender doesn't know what colour they are.

Another flash and now Bobby Drake grins at him, naked and caressing himself. 

"...COME ON; CHOOSE YOUR POISON, LOGAN."

Logan sets his face into a grim line. "-Mystique; Guess the truce is off, hunh?"

'Bobby' frowns. "...WHO...?" 

A moment's pause then his young, pale musculature is buried beneath blue, reptilian scales. 

"...AHH, THE SHAPESHIFTER. SORRY, I'M NOT HER EITHER..."

The little girl has formed again, staring at him with mockery blazing from her mismatched eyes.

Logan is about to respond, when something occurs to him. Keeping his eyes fixed on the not-child, he calls to mind the first fictional character he can think of

//Homer Simpson//

The creature stares with disdain at its bright yellow, four fingered hands and pronounced beergut.

"...CLEVER, WOLVERINE. YES, I WAS PICKING THE IMAGES FROM YOUR MIND."

"-How? If you ain't a shape-shifter, how're you changin' like this?"

The creature, once again in its preferred guise of the girl-child, grins at Logan in a disturbingly hungry manner. 

"... I FOUND A LITTLE MAN, HERE. JASON, WAS HIS NAME. SUCH POWER IN HIS HEAD, SUCH ILLUSIONS- THEY MADE HIS EACH OF HIS EYES A DIFFERENT COLOUR. BUT HE COULDN'T MOVE. COULDN'T EVEN SPEAK, THOUGH HE TOLD ME HOW COLD HE WAS."

The little girl starts moving towards Wolverine, slowly, shuffling her feet.

"...SO I STOPPED THE COLD FROM BOTHERING HIM EVER AGAIN, AND I TOOK HIS ILLUSIONS FOR MYSELF. THAT'S WHAT I DO. I TAKE THINGS FROM PEOPLE. I TAKE THINGS AND I GIVE THEM THINGS IN RETURN. RARELY THINGS THEY WANT, BUT BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS..."

A pause, then the girl-thing cocks its head- "...WHAT HAVE YOU GOT FOR ME, WOLVERINE?"

-and throws herself at him.

Logan moves to catch her, to pluck her from the air, but she cannons into him with a weight that is impossible- at least five times as heavy as she should be. Throwing him off balance, the creature backhands the Canadian with such force that he feels some of the vertebrae in his neck fracture, and they both fall over backwards.

Howling and gibbering, the child-thing leaps astride the prone mutant's chest and begins flailing at his face and neck with her hands. Deep gashes open in Logan's face and chest and he grabs at her arms, realizing she must have some kind of weapons attached to her fingers that her illusion is covering.

-The illusion that is beginning now to slip.

In its hunger, the creature has relaxed control of its form. The little girl's odd-coloured eyes are now uniform- a lightless black, unbroken except for dead white circles where the pupils should be. They are the pitiless eyes of a deep sea-fish. 

Her flesh is no longer rosy and pink, but is rapidly turning ash grey, the frostbitten scars on her cheeks deepening and becoming covered over by strange biomechanical growths. 

Her body still feels impossibly heavy, but if anything, she is becoming *thinner* her grey ribs and wasted stomach visible through slits in the ragged cloak she wears.

"Careful" Wolverine growls. "Your mask is slipping. It ain't midnight yet, but I'm pretty sure I *know* you, Bub..."

And he rams a double handful of his Adamantium claws deep into her chest.

Shocked, the girl-thing screeches and rears backwards, the strength of her movement hauling them both to their feet. She tries to back-peddle, but Wolverine keeps pace with her, keeping the blades in the warping and elongating chest, forcing them deeper. A weird thrum reverberates through his fingers as the claws pierce her heart.

The illusion finally dispels completely, and the thing impaled on the end of Logan's knives no longer looks like a little girl.

Tubes, respirators, scarecrow limbs, snake-like dreadlocks of bleached, dead hair, grey skin, clinging loosely on the bone. It barely even looks like a man.

Wolverine retracts his knives back into his hands and rips free of the emaciated creature's chest, waits for it to collapse.

The moment the claws are gone, dozens of the purple tubes from the wasted mutant's respirator unit detach themselves and set to work.

One plunges into the serrated hole left by Wolverine's claws and probing fingers and takes over the functions of the damaged heart.

Another pulls the ruptured red muscle itself from the chest cavity and begins knitting it back together and testing it as it pumps, before slipping it into a small compartment for further investigation and repair.

A third anesthetizes and sutures the chest wound itself closed with the neat, methodical stitches of a machine.

And a fourth lashes out at Wolverine, tip bearing a razor studded sucker at the centre of which sits a small medical laser, slicing into the Canadian's face and sending him reeling backwards.

"-Self-repairing prostheses? I'm impressed, *Marius*." The Canadian rumbles, feeling the wound on his cheek close over even as he touches it with a finger. "-Must've cost you an arm and a leg in Radio Shack gift vouchers."

-Emplate bows deep at the mention of its name, then titters shrilly, largely to itself, as it leaps like an improbable locust onto the newel-post of a broken stair-railing and perches there, perfectly balanced.

TBC...


	7. X-Position

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

Emplate cackles from its perch.

"...YOU LIKE IT? I'M PLEASED. I ORIGINALLY DESIGNED THE EQUIPMENT FOR NASA, TO BE USED AS PART OF A NEW TYPE OF DEEP-SPACE EXO-SUIT." 

It cocks its misshapen scarecrow head. 

"...ACTUALLY, I THINK THEY USED MY DISAPPEARANCE AS GROUNDS TO SECURE THE PATENT FOR THEMSELVES, THOSE BASTARDS. I MUST REMEMBER NEVER TO SHOW MY FACE AROUND CAPE CANAVERAL."

Wolverine has regained his feet. "-Frankly, I'm surprised you've got the balls to show that face *anywhere*, bub."

Choked hissing sounds like a moribund rattler as Emplate shakes with laughter. "...OOOH, SPIRIT! I CAN SEE WHAT THE RED-EYED ONE LIKES IN YOU, NOW. ASIDES..." it points "...FROM THAT BIG THING SWINGING AROUND BELOW YOUR BELT."

It leaps again, this time digging the claws of its hands and feet into the ceiling eight feet above the Canadian's head.

"...I DO SO LIKE MY PREY TO MANIFEST SPUNK, WOLVERINE; DEFIANCE IS A *MUCH* TASTIER CONDIMENT THAN CATSUP... EVEN THAT NEW GREEN VARIETY JUST *PALES* IN COMPARISON..."

Logan doesn't move out from beneath the raving mutant, but keeps his muscles alert and ready. "- I thought it might be you; knew it couldn't have been Jeannie, an' when you discounted Mystique... Short process of elimination, St Croix."

A scowl from the rafters. "...THAT NAME IS DEAD, STOP CALLING ME THAT! IT NO LONGER HAS ANY RELEVANCE. BUT IN TRUTH, I'M PLEASED YOU KNOW ME, WOLVERINE. IT'S NICE TO KNOW ONE IS MAKING ONE'S PRESENCE FELT."

"-You're pretty much a legend in some circles. The Mutant that feeds off other Mutants."

That strange head nods. "..YES. I SUSPECT MUTANT PARENTS TELL THEIR CHILDREN TO GO TO SLEEP OR EMPLATE WILL GET THEM!"

"-So what are you doing here? Surely you've got plenty of places to see, people to eat?"

A titter. "...YOU'D BE SURPRISED AT HOW WELL I'VE EATEN HERE, WOLVERINE. AREN'T YOU WONDERING HOW I KNOW YOUR NAME?"

Burning with incandescent madness, those blackfire eyes fix on Logan's.

"...STRYKER OF COURSE. BIT OLD, SLIGHT GAMEY FLAVOUR, BUT HE STILL WENT DOWN A TREAT."

Emplate tires of hanging over the Canadian and scuttles across the ceiling and down the wall to perch near Scott again.

"...AND THEN THERE WAS LITTLE, WHEELCHAIR BOUND JASON, OF THE ODD-EYES AND LITTLE GIRL FIXATION, AND THAT METAL-BONED WOMAN IN THE EXPERIMENTATION ROOM. YUKIO? YES. VERY STRONG, THAT ONE. I COULDN'T KILL HER, SO I JUST SIPPED HER A LITTLE. NOW I AM STRONG, TOO."

Logan looks shocked. "Lady Deathstrike? You're sayin' she's alive? But I-"

"...I KNOW WHAT YOU DID. YES. BUT SHE DIDN'T DIE, WOLVERINE. SHE'S JUST AS RESILIENT AS YOU. I FELT SORRY FOR HER AFTER I FED ON HER. PLUS SHE JUST. WOULD NOT. DIE. EVENTUALLY I GOT BORED AND HELPED HER OUT OF THE FACILITY."

Emplate spider-leaps over to one of the huge Cerebro wall-plates and fiddles with its circuits. A moment later, and the plate displays a visual image of the room where Logan fought the clawed Asian woman.

//Security camera image// he thinks.

The tank where he'd left her is empty.

tbc...


	8. The Gentleman Vampire

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

"...BELIEVE IT. YUKIO STILL LIVES. SOMEWHERE. DON'T ASK ME WHERE SHE WENT. LIKE I SAID, I GOT BORED WITH HER WHEN I COULDN'T KILL HER. HER CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS WERE NOT GREAT."

"-But... how?"

"...YOU REALLY CAN'T REMEMBER ANYTHING, CAN YOU? SHE WAS PART OF THE SAME PROGRAM AS YOU, WOLVERINE. AS WAS SABERTOOTH. ALL STRYKER'S WORK."

The mad thing shifts its position again, moving like a moribund crab. "I REALLY SHOULD GIVE YOU A HUG AND A NICE MEAL. WHY, WE'RE PRACTICALLY FAMILY!"

Logan is shaking his head. "No. No, your brain is as decayed as the rest of you. Alright, I can see how Creed and Stryker's aide might have some connection to all this, but you... you're nothing like me."

Emplate makes a show of clutching its hands to its withered bosom, dramatically. "...OH, WOE IS ME! SHUNNED BY THE VERY FLESH OF MY FLESH!"

One of the purple tubes detaches, a whirring surgical saw at its tip, and slices a chunk of flesh free from the back of the emaciated mutant's hand. Emplate moves underneath a light. 

"...OR SHOULD I SAY, BONE OF MY *BONE*?"

The room's harsh lighting gleams off the shining metal fused with the yellowed gnarlbone of Emplate's knuckles. 

Logan gasps. "Adamantium..."

"...YES. JUST IN THE HANDS, NOT MY ENTIRE SYSTEM LIKE YOU AND MS YUKIO. I WAS A PROTOTYPE. YOU AND SHE, AND VICTOR, WERE MUTANTS FROM BIRTH- STRYKER MERELY ADDED TO THE GIFTS NATURE HAD ALREADY PROVIDED YOU. *I* WAS NOT BORN INTO THIS. I REQUIRED A HIGHER DEGREE OF... AUGUMENTATION. SOME ASSEMBLY WAS REQUIRED..."

"-Why? What would a Mutie-hater like Stryker possibly want you for?"

"...FOR THE SAME REASON ALL HIS EXPERIMENTS SERVED, OF COURSE. TO WIPE MUTANTS OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. FREE IT UP FOR THE MONKEYS. THE HUMANS."

"-Huh?"

"...THINK ABOUT IT, LOGAN. THINK ABOUT WHAT I DO..."

Emplate walks forward under the lights, hands outstretched, displaying the fanged mouths that champ and gnash and foam in each palm.

"...DO YOU SEE, YET? A MUTANT, DESIGNED SO THAT IT CAN ONLY SURVIVE BY DEVOURING OTHER MUTANTS RIGHT DOWN TO THE GENES. EVEN THOSE WHO I DON'T KILL SUFFER IRREPARABLE CHROMOSOMAL DAMAGE THAT AT BEST MEANS THEY'LL EITHER BE RENDERED STERILE, OR CONTRACT A WIDE ARRAY OF GENETIC CANCERS. IF THEY'RE REALLY FUCKED, THEY TURN INTO SHADOWY COPIES OF ME, AND BECOME PARASITES OF THE DOUBLE HELIX IN THEIR OWN RIGHT."

Logan's eyes widen and he shoots a desperate look at the still-comatose Scott.

Emplate leers. "...NO, NOT HIM; NOT YET. I WHACKED HIM OVER THE HEAD WITH A PIECE OF CONCRETE. I DIDN'T WANT TO FEED WITHOUT *YOU* HERE. WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT?"

Wolverine is nodding, whilst inside, his mind is roaring at him to kill and keep killing until only Scott is left.

//Buy some time, weasel-boy// he tells himself.

"...So Stryker created you to feed on Mutants, create other victims who will then feed on other Mutants, and then when there ain't any more left to eat, you'd just starve ter death?"

A nod. "...PRECISELY. ONLY STRYKER FUCKED UP. I WAS CREATED TO SUBSIST SOLELY ON THE GENETIC INFORMATION OF MY FELLOW MUTANTS. HOWEVER, SHORTLY AFTER MY CREATION I WAS ABLE TO RECOGNIZE THAT HUMANS CARRY THE POTENTIAL TO PASS THE MUTANT GENE TO THE NEXT GENERATION IN THEIR *OWN* CHROMOSOMES. HUMAN, MUTANT- ALL ARE VIABLE TARGETS; THOUGH I'LL ADMIT THAT MUTANTS TASTE BETTER. HUMANS HAVE A CLINGY, APE-AFTERTASTE. NOT NICE..."

Logan is warily eyeing off the other mutant whilst subtly positioning himself between it and Scott. "-I'm sure Stryker was just thrilled when he found out."

"...OH, *YES*. GAVE ME A FEW MORE REASONS TO HAVE TO WEAR THESE RESPIRATORS, THEN LOCKED ME UP IN HIS CRYO-STORAGE UNIT WITH HIS OTHER PET FREAKS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH."

"-But you got out."

"...THANKS TO THE GOOD PROFESSOR, YES. HE WOKE ME UP, AND THE DAM BURSTING RIPPED THE PLACE APART SO I COULD GET OUT. THE CRYO-CHAMBER'S FLOODED NOW. SHAME YOU DIDN'T GET TO SEE IT; THERE WERE *SUCH* INTERESTING PEOPLE THERE; I REMEMBER A LITTLE GREEN POTATO THING WITH A CAMERA STRAPPED TO ITS HEAD, AND A BOY THAT HAD TWO HUGE WORMS INSTEAD OF A STOMACH..."

The section of Cerebero panel that the twisted mutant has turned into a video display changes to show a large chamber, completely flooded with murky gray water. Strange, half-formed shapes float dead in the stagnant depths of the room; drowned specimens in some gibbering, eldrich aquarium. He sees the corpse of a woman with long, cruel shards of ivory jutting from her joints; what appears to be a man bobbing in the water, blisters all over his bright pink skin and two antennae protruding from the thick mass of white hair floating in the current like a foggy nimbus around his head.

Emplate leers. "...OH LOOK; THAT'S WHERE I WAS BORN..." It points to the screen with a serrated claw the length of a chopstick.

On the monitor is a person-sized cylinder of cloudy plexiglass with a huge crack down one side, voiding viscous electric blue fluid into the water in eerie Rorschach shapes. 

Stenciled on one side are words, faded by the water but still legible.

STRYK ANTI- UTAN P OJE T 02 6: 

CH OSOMAL AMPIR PROTO YP EMPLATE

 

Those long fingers click over the cool metal surface of the wall, competing with the champing noise of the deadly maws centre palm, as Emplate beams.

"...THIS TANK WAS MY MOTHER, MY FATHER AND MY WOMB... IT EVEN NAMED ME, YOU SEE?"

Logan scoffs. "-It should read 'Template'; You got yer name wrong!"

A dangerous light in the mad, jet eyes. "...IT READS 'EMPLATE'..."

The Canadian raises placating hands. "Okay Bub, whatever floats your boat..."

TBC...


	9. Fisticuffs

SWIM SAID THE MAMA FISHIE, SWIM IF YOU CAN

by  
Wirrrn 

 

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

The Canadian looks up. " But if the cell was broken open in the flood, why hang around? Why not scarper?"

Emplate idly clicks its talons against a rusted pipe,enjoying the sound and sensation. "...I TOLD YOU. IT'S NOT LIKE I'M IN LOVE WITH THIS PLACE, BUT WITH NUMEROUS POWERFUL MUTANTS ON SITE, EITHER DEAD OR TRAPPED, I CAN OVERLOOK THE SUB-PAR MAID SERVICE..."

A terrible thought slams into Logan and knocks the colour from his face. "- One of the Mutants you've found here; Have yer seen-"

"...A WOMAN? RED-HEAD, MID-THIRTIES, SHARPLY FEATURED?"

Logan feels his viscera fall off a precipice. "-Yeah."

"...NOPE, DOESN'T RING A BELL!"

"-But you got us to follow you by wearin' her shape..."

A Nod. "...DEAR LITTLE JASON AND HIS ILLUSIONS AGAIN. DON'T WORRY- I HAVEN'T BATTENED OFF YOUR PRECIOUS JEAN GREY. SHE IS BEYOND ME..."

"-So she is dead then."

"...SHE IS *BEYOND* ME... "

-Several odd tics from its eyes occur Wolverine realizes Emplate is trying to wink at him.

"NOT THAT I WOULD HAVE FED OFF HER EVEN IF I COULD HAVE; ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTING ABSOLUTELY, AND ALL THAT..."

"-What the fuck are you on about?"

"...I DARESAY YOU'LL FIND OUT BEFORE LONG..."

Logan feels blood pounding behind his eyes. "-What's that supposed to mean?"

"...ONCE THERE WAS A LITTLE OLD RAM..."

"-St Croix!"

"...TRIED TO PUNCH A HOLE IN A DAM..."

"*Fuck* this!" Logan bellows and charges the disfigured Mutant, knuckles gleaming as they disgorge tempered agony.

"...BUT HE'S GOT...HIGH HOPES..." Emplate simply feints to one side and slips out of phase, becoming a blurrypurpled shadow. 

It rematerialises directly in front of Wolverine and, with that same impossible strength, catches the older Mutant by the throat, lifting him bodily off the floor with one grinning hand.

"...SHOULD I BITE YOU?" It ponders. "...I COULDN'T TEAR YUKIO'S FLESH, COULD ONLY DRAIN HER A SMIDGE...STRYKER KEPT HER NEARBY AT ALL TIMES, PROBABLY TINKERED WITH HER REGULARLY. BUT I THINK I *CAN* KILL YOU, WOLVERINE..."

Logan feels the fanged maw against his larynx lapping obscenely at his flesh, foul ichors drooling down his collarbone to matt the hair on his chest. "-Course ya can, Bub- it ain't like we're family, right?"

Emplate cocks its head, frowns, and relaxes its hold

(slightly)

"...EXPLAIN THAT REMARK."

Logan bares strong teeth but doesn't struggle against the thing's grip. "-Well, if you see that tube up on the screen there as your birthplace, n' Stryker built it, then you must view him as a father figure, hey? Leastways a little bit. But you still did him in."

Oil-black eyes blink in surprise. "...CONTEXTUAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE CAGE FIGHTER? IF I STILL HAD SKIN ON MY ARMS, THEY'D BE COMING UP GOOSEFLESH..."

"-Answer the question."

A shrug. "...I DIDN'T 'DO HIM IN'. THAT HONOUR WAS LENSHERR'S... AND YOUR OWN. I MERELY LICKED THE BOWL CLEAN OF LEFTOVERS, AFTERWARDS. AND SHOW ME A SON WHO *DOESN'T* HAVE ISSUES WITH HIS DADDY..."

A beat, then Emplate hurls Wolverine backwards without biting him, back-flips twenty feet and dives straight for the precarious metal grate which holds the unconscious Scott. 

-The Canadian feels a gasp rise in his throat, but the emaciated Mutant weighs so little that the grate doesn't even make so much as a clang when it lands and moves its hands towards Scott's slumbering face.

"-You get the fuck away from him!"

TBC

=====


	10. The Origin of Species

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

Logan winces inwardly, as always, to himself as his claws snick out. But the capering vampire-thing rearing over *his* Scott takes precedence.

"-I said keep away from him!"

"...CONVINCE ME..."

"-Hunh?"

The part of Emplate's face that is still visible above the Gordian knot of tubes, bladders and siphons is all-but glowing with sardonic glee. "...YOU KNOW WHY I BROUGHT YOU HERE; YOU AND YOUR 'FRIEND'..."

Logan *hears* the quotation marks, but lets the jibe slide. "...I can guess; yer were peckish?"

"...TRUE ENOUGH; BUT YOUR UNEXPECTED ELOQUENCE INTRIGUES ME, WOLVERINE. SO I GIVE YOU A CHANCE..."

It reaches down and pats Scott's unconscious cheek, almost fondly- the illusion rapidly dispelling when it begins to drool, uncontrollably.

"...GIVE ME A WELL-THOUGHT OUT, RATIONAL REASON-A SCIENTIFIC ONE, USING MUTANT GENETICS- WHY I SHOULDN'T JUST DEVOUR YOUR PRECIOUS SCOTT SUMMERS HERE AND NOW, AND I'LL LET HIM GO..."

"Evolution ain't really one of me strong points, Bub."

That glittering, hyper-aware stare pins him again.

"...NO. BUT YOU READ UP ON IT IN ANTHROPOLOGY TEXTS, DIDN'T YOU, WOLVERINE; WHEN YOU FIRST CAME INTO YOUR POWERS? ALL US MUTANTS DO. JUST LIKE EVERY TEEN MAKES A BEELINE FOR THE KINSEY REPORT THE MOMENT THEIR HORMONES START TRICKLING..."

Logan whuffs a chuckle, despite himself. "Alright; well... Ahh... we're all related aren't we? You shouldn't be feedin' off yer relatives."

"...OH PLEASE, YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN *THAT*. I MAY CLAIM SOME MURKY DEGREE OF KINSHIP WITH YOU, SABERTOOTH AND YUKIO, BECAUSE WE WERE ALL PET PROJECTS OF THE LATE, UNLAMENTED GENERAL WILLIAM STRYKER M.D, BUT SCOTT SUMMERS WAS NOT PART OF THE PROGRAM. YOU MAY AS WELL TRY AND LINK YOUR BOY-TOY WITH THE MONKEYS."

A raised eyebrow. "Humans?"

"...IF YOU LIKE. I FIND THEM ARGUMENTATIVE, HAIRY LITTLE CREATURES THAT CHATTER INCESSANTLY AND THROW THEIR SHIT ALL OVER THE PLANET. THUS, MONKEYS.

"High opinion of Homo Sapiens you've got there, Marius."

"...HUMANS ARE UNIMPORTANT. THEY'RE DESTRUCTIVE, HOSTILE, FINITE-LIFESPANNED LITTLE CREATURES THAT ARE ONLY NOW BEGINNING TO REALIZE THEY'VE FUCKED *THEMSELVES* UP ALONG WITH THE PLANET. THEY'LL BE EXTINCT IN THREE GENERATIONS; FOUR, TOPS. FORGET ABOUT THEM."

"-But Mutants and Humans are related to each other. Surely we have an obligation to he-"

"...RELATED? PROVE IT..."

The Canadian pauses. "-Well, there's that recent study by that Brit, Attenborough. He showed we have a common ancestor. Boy-something."

"...SOUNDS MADE UP TO ME. GIVE ME A NAME..."

"Bon...no, that's it! Boisei! Australopithecus Boisei! both Humans and Mutants have DNA from Boisei in our double helix. It's a common relative."

"...I SEE. BUT BOISEI WAS THE VEGETARIAN DEAD END TO THE HOMINID LINE, WASN'T IT? IT SPECIALIZED TOO MUCH, AND WHEN THE GRASSES IT FED ON DIED OUT...WHOOPS, APOCALYPSE! YOU'RE SUGGESTING WE'RE RELATED TO A LOSER? AND HOW THEN DO YOU ACCOUNT FOR GRAYDON CREED'S THEORY THAT MUTANTS ARE ACTUALLY NOT EVOLVED FROM PRIMATES AT ALL, BUT CETACEANS, LIKE A DOLPHIN?"

"Hey, it can't have been that much of a loser if it passed its DNA on to creatures tens of millions of years down the track. And Creed? The man's a deluded bigot. The only reason he picked dolphins is because of the recent research that suggests they're much dumber than we first thought, and that monkeys are quicker on the uptake. Creed just can't handle the fact that us Muties are swingin' all over his family tree. Anyway- aren't dolphins themselves descended from an aquatic primate? It may have gone into the water, but it was up in the treetops first, Bub.""

Emplate gives a weird little trilling yip and bows deeply in the Canadian's direction. 

"...WELL DONE, WOLVERINE; I DOUBT YOU COULD TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS JUST YET, BUT YOU CERTAINLY HELD YOUR OWN. I NEVER WOULD HAVE THOUGHT YOU HAD IT IN YOU..."

Logan feels a small flush of pride, despite himself. Strangely, he feels almost as happy over *this* victory as he does when he's wailing away on some monke... human sap in the cage.

"Okay; but you know I was grasping at straws, right? Boisei... it may have been the mutual ancestor, but it wasn't the dominant form of life at the time."

"...THAT'S TRUE; IT WAS STRICTLY SMALL POTATOES. BUT IT *COULD* HAVE BEEN GREAT. IF IT HADN'T BECOME SO SPECIALIZED, BROADENED ITS DIET FROM JUST A FEW SPECIES OF GRASS, IT MIGHT HAVE SURVIVED; MIGHT HAVE BECOME SOMETHING...MORE. IT HAD THE POTENTIAL."

Emplate crawls closer to the Canadian, scuttling down the damp walls sideways like a crab that had been taken out of its shell, crushed, then put back in the shell again.

"...JUST AS THE MONKEYS -AND US- HAVE THAT POTENTIAL FOR GREATNESS. THE POTENTIAL TO *EVOLVE*..."

"Through their children?"

A nod from the scarecrow-head. "...ALRIGHT, I SUPPOSE, YES. THROUGH THEIR OFFSPRING. BUT ALSO THROUGH *ME*..."

Wolverine frowns. "Huh?"

Emplate spreads its arms expansively, maintaining a hold on the sheer wall with the claws of its feet. "...HUMAN, MUTANT. IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. AFTER MY BENEDICTIONS, ALL ARE REMADE IN *MY* IMAGE..."

A mucous-crackle cackle.

"...I AM THE GREAT EQUALIZER, WOLVERINE. I LAY ON MY HANDS, AND ALL THEIR DIFFERENCES, ALL THEIR QUARRELS, THEIR VERY *CHROMOSOMES* ARE WASHED AWAY. ALL ARE DISSOLVED, ALL ARE *RESOLVED* INTO EMPLATE."

"And here I thought that *Worthington* was in love with himself..."

A mocking laugh. "...YOU DON'T BELIEVE? ASK BISHOP... HE'S SEEN WHAT I CAN DO. HE'S SEEN THE FUTURE I HAVE PLANNED FOR THE WORLD. ARMY OF ME, WOLVERINE. IT'S NOT JUST A BJORK SONG ANYMORE."

"Ask who?"

"...OH, THAT'S RIGHT. YOU DON'T MEET BISHOP FOR ANOTHER THREE WINTERS YET. LIVING ON SO MANY PLANES OF EXISTENCE ALL AT ONCE IS A *BITCH* ON THE MEMORY. WELL, LET'S FORGET ABOUT WINTER AND ASK THE *SUMMERS*, THEN, SHALL WE? AH-HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The creature turns and makes a strange gesture in Scott's direction that sets the mouths in his palms screaming. 

At long last, and seemingly in *response* to the movements of Emplate's gnashing hands, the younger Mutant groans, and begins to wake up.

Logan runs forward, frantic. "-Scott! Don't move love, yer over a sheer drop! Keep yer eyes shu-"

-Emplate drops neatly onto the Canadian's shoulders like a backpack from Hell, cackling and hissing, humming to itself in its madness.

"...NO FAIR SPOILING HIS SURPRISE, WOLVERINE..."

Logan bellows as the creature's long claws rip into his throat and feel around, probing for his vocal chords. The Canadian careers about wildly, unable to dislodge the disfigured maniac from his back, but succeeding in keeping it enough off-balance from landing a blow.

"-You... you said you'd let him go, St Croix."

"...YES, AND INDEED I WILL... ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE BOTTOM...WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IT WAS? EIGHT, NINE HUNDRED FEET?!"

"-No! Scott, don't move!"

TBC...


	11. The Scales Fall from His Eyes

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

"-No! Scott, don't you move!"

Scott Summers mind is fogged; his thought processes roil over slowly, caught in quicksand.

//Lo- Logan? Where are...//

His head pounds. Granted, this is not unusual, but this pain feels different than the power-based headache, so routine he doesn't even notice it anymore.

This *hurts*

//something's wrong... I can hear... is that a voice?//

Confused, groggy and pained, Scott does something he has never, ever done before.

He neglects to reach up one of his elegant, long-fingered hands to his temples, to check whether his visor is in place before he

Opens.

His.

Eyes.

* * * 

 

Scott is lucky. 

Relatively. 

He's lying more or less on his stomach, head pillowed on his hands, and he's still groggy from spending such a long time in an unnatural sleep.

When his eyes open, they only open slightly. And most of the deadly, beautiful light that bursts forth hits his own hands and forearms and is harmlessly absorbed.

Most of it.

A diffuse beam of crimson force punches free of Scott's eyes and blows the corner of grating that his arms do not cover to so many pieces of flying, molten slag. Scott finds himself suddenly tilted in an alarmingly downward direction and he begins to slide towards the edge of the warping metal grid, beyond which a truly impressive drop yawns open and ready for him to tumble down its throat.

He closes his eyes, shutting out the sight of the fall as well as shutting off his optic blast. 

But he continues to slide towards the edge, regardless.

 

* * * 

-"Scott!

Logan frantically runs for the younger mutant, even as he tears and punches at the deranged, cackling scarecrow on his back. "-Dammit, St Croix, get off!"

"...I DON'T THINK SO, WOLVERINE; I LIKE THIS VIEW; I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM UP HERE!" 

Emplate digs the long, horny talons of its feet into Logan's sides, as the Canadian Mutant were some improbable steed. "...WANNA SEE HIM OPEN THOSE BABY BLUES AGAIN...?"

"No! Dammit leave him alone!"

But Emplate is already weaving arcane designs in the air with his hands again. The mouths in the centre of his palms disgorge their tongues and lap at his strange fingers, ululating.

* * * 

 

"Scott!"

The young Mutant moves his head about, blindly. He can hear Logan close by, and knows that his lover is trying to help him. 

But he can hear another voice, too- grating and raw, full of pain, like the caw of a raven impaled on razor-wire, but somehow gleeful too.

And the voice is not just *outside* his head.

//SCOTT OPEN YOUR EYES SCOTT OBEY SCOTT LOGANS HERE OPEN YOUR EYES LOOK AT HIM OBEY OPEN YOUR EYES HES COME FOR YOU OPEN YOUR EYES OBEY OBEY LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT LOGAN NOW//

He feels his lids flutter, desperate to open, despite, against, his will.

His eyesockets itch.

* * * 

 

"...AHA! HE'S WEAKENING! SO MUCH FOR THE FAMOUS SUMMERS IRON, EH, WOLVERINE? WON'T BE LONG NOW...SHOULDN'T NEED MORE THAN A *SHOVE*..."

-More hand symbols, and across from them, Scott screams in pain.

Logan snarls and claws at the devil on his back.

"-Goddam you, St Croix! You're hurting him!"

A titter. "...NO; HE'S HURTING HIMSELF, WOLVERINE; ALL HE HAS TO DO IS GIVE IN. STUBBORN PRICK, ISN'T HE?..."

Logan slashes at the emaciated mutant as it crawls across his shoulders, but Emplate simply laughs and bats his hands away, before leaning out to crow at Scott.

"...HEY CYCLOPS! NO MORE FIGHTING ME, PLEASE! IT TICKLES..." Emplate scrapes a talon over the raw, slug-belly flesh of its forehead and a long strip of ribbon-skin rips loose and falls, sliding down Logan's neck. The Canadian writhes in disgust.

"...I GROW WEARY OF THIS GAME, CYCLOPS. YOUR HANDSOME LOGAN IS HERE WITH ME; OPEN YOUR PRETTY EYES AND LOOK AT HIM. AND DO IT *NOW*..."

Emplate vaults off Logan's back and lands beside him, again batting aside the Canadian's attempt at attack and lifting him off his feet with ease, to dangle from frail claws.

With horror, Logan watches the veins on Emplate's head as they *squirm* like a bolus of maggots as it attempts to warp Scott's will to its own. The ragged Mutant's respirators are pumping double time to supply it with energy.

Emplate staggers...

"...NO..." It rasps. "...NO... NOT YET, DEATH, YOU BITCH; NOT WITHOUT THESE TWO TO KEEP ME WARM..."

Needing more power, It shifts and warps, back into the Jason Stryker/avatar form of the odd-eyed little girl. Emplate feels Jason's purloined strength flood his wasted arteries as though he has been plugged into a mains outlet.

"...AAAH...."

Scott screams like an animal dying in agony and his eyes fly open.

Huge bolts of unfiltered, unleashed red death smash down dozens of Cerebro panels aross the way from him.

//LOGANLOOKATHIMLOOKATHIMLOOKATHIMLOGANLOGANLOOK//

The American mutant, beautiful and naked, crimson light pouring from his eyes, begins to turn in their direction. Every muscle tensed, fighting Emplate's twisted willpower every inch of the way, his neck wrenches around towards them, bearing those gorgeous, deadly eyes with it.

"...HERE IT COMES, WOLVERINE" The mad thing cackles. "...CAN YOU HEAL FROM THIS?!"

...tbc...


	12. From the Ashes it is Reborn

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

-Emplate cackles with glee at the sight, the stolen form of the little girl it wears over its own decay wobbling with the movement. It hugs itself, those long, bemouthed hands singing a strange, garbled hymn.

"...ISN'T IT WONDERFUL, WOLVERINE?" the thing cackles. "...POOR, USED, CRIPPLED LITTLE JASON; IF I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BE THIS HANDY, I WOULD HAVE LET HIM DIE MORE PLEASANTLY!"

Logan writhes like a knotted hagfish in the disfigured Mutant's impossibly strong grasp, slashing out with his claws. More than once he feels the talons rip through the illusion and puncture the strange flesh beneath, cutting deep, but Emplate doesn't seem to feel it, or care.

"-Die! Why won't you just die, you twisted scarecrow fuck?!"

That glittering, hyper-alert gaze rolls madly in his direction again. "...AND MISS THE LAST ACT OF THE SHOW? ...YOU'RE CRAZIER THAN I AM, CANUCK EH?!"

Scott screams again, across from them. Not in pain this time, but in warning.

"~lo...logan. cant fight. strong. hurts think. you. you go. now. yes. go. run!"

Logan's heart goes out to his friend. Or maybe it's just his blood in his mouth that he tastes.

"-Like fucking *hell*!" the Wolverine roars.

Logan's handsome face twists into a feral Halloween mask as the Wolverine pours molten into the metal cage of his skull.

He breaks the emaciated thing's hold on his throat by the expedient, simple measure of driving both feet up and out, swinging them full force into a pliant mass of keloid scar tissue beneath the solar plexus.

Emplate hisses like a leaky steam pipe and falls back, but Wolverine follows through and the kick morphs into a hold; squat but supple legs slide around the other mutant's prominent ribcage and hurl it forward.

-Onto Wolverine's claws.

Emplate whines, high-pitched, but refuses to port away to safety. Indeed, its giggling intensifies, even as the Wolverine bears down on it, pushes the claws into its abdomen right up to mid-wrist, all civilities burned away, death in his eyes.

"...AHH..." Emplate purrs, a strange crackle in its voice- possibly from blood pooling in its respirator. "...THE WOLVERINE AT LAST; UNBOUND AND UNFETTERED... I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK WE'D BE STUCK WITH POLITE LITTLE LOGAN FOREVER..."

Wolverine blazes triumphant rage from the clench of his set mouth, and just pure rage from his eyes. Little or no sentience sparks there- they are the flat, chocolate orbs of a Blue Shark starting a kill roll.

He thrusts his hands deeper, sinking them wetly into Emplate's middle. He feels his knuckles scrape against what's left of the creature's original lungs.

Some intelligence begins to flare in him again. "-For Scott..." he spits.

Incredibly, there is an expression of pity on the malformed face. "...DEAR, DELUDED WOLVERINE; HE'S QUITE BEYOND YOUR HELP, NOW. HAVEN'T WE BEEN THROUGH THIS BEFORE?"

-All traces of empathy are gone from Emplate now. As is any pain. Only madness, only *hunger* rake Wolverine's face through those awful eyes. It speaks again, punctuating each word with a slashing blow from its own talons.

"...YOU. CAN'T. KILL. ME. NO. ONE CAN."

Emplate puts its hands on Logan's shoulders, bracing itself, and pushes, *wrenching* itself off of the Canadian Mutant's claws. There is a liquid sound, and then it is free, standing before him.

"...YOU STUPID, INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE THING, WAVING YOUR CLAWS AROUND... YOU THINK THESE MACHINES OF MINE KEEP ME *ALIVE*? NO, NO...THEY KEEP ME FROM *ROTTING*!"

-a grim smile flashing at Logan's sudden, awful comprehension.

"...SO NOW YOU KNOW; WHAT WAS THAT LINE FROM 'ANGEL HEART' AGAIN? "HOW TERRIBLE IS WISDOM WHEN IT BRINGS NO PROFIT TO THE WISE?" HA! WOLVERINE? NO, MY FRIEND...YOU ARE A *VOLE* AND I AM THE HUNTING OWL..."

Thin blood spurts into the air from somewhere on Emplate's body. It grimaces, and the little girl-avatar fades away like the mirage it is, leaving Emplate standing before the Canadian once again in its natural form.

Logan sees now why none of his claws caused the deranged thing any damage. The entire front of the torso is a writhing mass of purple metal- dozens of jointed tubes flail about all over the surface, flapping and twisting like boiling eels- more erupt from beneath the mask covering its mouth even as he looks. For any of Logan's claws to pass through the hundreds of whipping metal tendrils would be a million-to-one shot.

Emplate cocks its head to where Scott is still slowly angling his head towards them. The deadly red beam is now only ten feet away, at most.

"...ALMOST HERE, LOGAN; YOU WANT TO STOP HIM LOOKING? THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO DO IT..."

Eyes burn into Logan's, blazing more fiercely than Scott's ever could. "...GUT HIM."

"-You've gotta be fuckin' kidding, St Croix; Not in another million years."

"...REALLY?"

Another, different gesture from those ragged claw hands.

Logan felt his arms come up, straight out at his sides and stiff, claws extended, as though he was some surreal lawn ornament. Or cookie-cutter.

"...OFF YOU GO, WOLVERINE; MAY THE BEST MAN WIN!"

Logan snapped his jaws forward in a primal snarl as he feels his legs move of their own accord -or rather, Emplate's- and frog-march him in Scott's direction. Across the way from him, he sees that Scott is being similarly puppeted.

"-Dammit!" Logan struggles against his own limbs as they haul him forward, trying to regain some degree of control over his hijacked body. "-What..." he manages to drag his feet back a metre or so, but his upper body leans out beyond his centre of gravity, without his volition, and totters him forward six more steps. "-What are you pulling, St Croix?"

A titter. "... I'M PULLING *YOU*, WOLVERINE- SURELY YOU'D NOTICED? JASON'S PRIMARY MUTATION...NEURAL SECRETIONS THAT TURN THE WILLPOWER OF ANYONE WITHIN VISUAL RANGE INTO SO MUCH CHOCOLATE FROSTING..."

Another step. Two more. 

"-You... had this in... mind all along."

"...OF COURSE! WHY DO YOU THINK I TOOK THE FORM OF MISS GREY, FOR HER CUP SIZE?! WHAT BETTER WAY TO LURE TWO OF THE STRONGEST MUTANTS IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE INTO MY HUNGRY HANDS THAN WITH THE WOMAN YOU USE AN EXCUSE TO GET ALL HOT FOR EACH OTHER...?"

"-that's not-"

"...OH, OF COURSE...AND THE FACT THAT WHEN I FIRST REVEALED MYSELF TO YOU YOU WERE BOTH STARK-BOLLOCK NAKED IN EACH OTHERS' ARMS WAS JUST A COINCIDENCE... LEMME GUESS, SECONDARY MUTATIONS THAT MADE YOUR CLOTHES LEAP AWAY FROM YOUR SKIN, SO YOU WERE KEEPING EACH OTHER WARM?"

The Wolverine snarls. "-What goes on between Scott n' me is nobody's business; 'specially *yours*..."

"...OH, BUT IT'S MY BUSINESS *NOW*, WOLVERINE... BUT DON'T YOU WORRY. THE ONLY INTEREST I HAVE IN YOUR BODIES IS HOW SLOWLY I CAN FORCE YOU TO TAKE EACH OTHER APART..."

"-No!"

"...DON'T WORRY, WOLVERINE; I'LL MAKE SURE YOU BOTH GO OUT KNOWING *JUST* HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT EACH OTHER..."

Logan feels his body stir, and his penis becomes painfully erect, entirely without his volition. A strangled cry from Scott points to him being similarly affected.

Both Mutants are now only scant feet away from each other, within each other's earshot. Emplate titters to itself and allows them to talk, gobbets of spit running down its chin as it anticipates the meal to come.

"~Logan, please...get out of here."

"-Even if I could, I wouldn't Scott; I ain't leavin' you like this; and I ain't leavin' Emplate alive..."

"~Em...Emplate? It's not... Not Jean? She's not... Auuhh!" Scott moaned as the cackling madman made him twist his body painfully.

"-Of course not; she'd never do this to you. Scott; I can't stop... Can you get out of my way?"

"N...no..."

A pause. "-Alright. It's okay. You're gonna be okay, Scott..."

The Canadian managed to wrench his head around to stare at their tormentor. "-*Fuck* you, St Croix"

Painfully, fighting the emaciated creature's purloined mind-control with every metal-laced cell of his body, Logan turned his hands inward, and drove the claws upwards, towards his own chest.

Beneath its faceplate and its writhing nest of coils, Emplate's face falls. "...OH NO..."

Scott, still desperately willing the three cell-thick membranes of his eyelids shut, catches the movement from the corner of his lethal gaze. "-God, Logan-no!"

_-And then the voice, in all of their heads, warm and loving and still sweetly feminine, for all its massive, crackling power._

To Wolverine: [ _logan dont you dare you dont have to_ ] 

He feels something inside him *push* and with a not-quite-audible crack, his limbs are his own again. Something dances in his forebrain, winged and light and avian.

To Scott: [ _scott it wont last forever but here take control_ ]

and for the first time in his life, Scott knows how to power his blasts. His ever-present headache is *gone*, and something feels as though is *coating* the area of his brain that was damaged in his childhood. 

Something warm. 

Like feathers.

And in Emplate: [ _poor marius you need to stop this now_ ]

Emplate is shaking behind the respirators, though whether from rage, fear or both, even it may not know. It sees a vague shape before its mind's eye. Sharp, like its sisters, but not dark. Incandescent.

"...PENANCE? M? I'M SORRY; I LOVED YOU, BUT I HAD TO..."

[ _marius_ ]

That strange face sneers. "...*YOU*; I SHOULD HAVE SNUFFED YOU OUT WHEN I FIRST SENSED YOU..."

Shrieking, the purple tubes writhing at his chest now pumping triple-time, Emplate wrenches at his own mind, smashes outwards with a psychic wave containing every last bit of Jason Stryker that he stole.

All three men see the vague, flame-like shape in their minds *recoil*

[ _...unnnh..._ ]

-Scott staggers, the red beam once again catching and beginning to sputter at his eyes, weak and diffuse, but growing stronger-

-Logan grinds his teeth together as he feels his muscles tug him forward towards his lover again, though slower, and his claws snick out-

-Emplate collapses on all fours as a flood of pure power surges into its frail body, purloined from the strange, fiery presence that isn't quite there before them all. What it takes in burns away all that is left of Jason's mind-controlling enzymes, but that is unimportant.

Emplate feels as though it's just been given a blood transfusion from God. Picture now its nervous system, lighting up like an exploding nebula.

Emplate finds to its delight that it no longer needs to feed on the lovers, the Claw and the Gaze. It no longer needs to feed *at all*.

Instead, those blazing, black witchlight eyes turn upward, taking in the dome of Cerebro II. Hands come up either side of the strange head, spasming with both arcane movements that transcribe into telekinesis, and with the sheer jolt the purloined energy has given it.

(deep within its shallow, pigeon chest, the wizened, just-repaired heart is beating eighty or ninety times a second; the respirators are working so fast to supply it with whatever semblence of life it maintains that the sound of their pumping has become the purring of a gigantic mechanical cat)

The creature finds its feet. Thrumming with impossible energies, it briefly considers overcoming the lovers' pitiable resistance again and watching them slaughter each other, but the flittering, incandescent presence gives it pause. 

Emplate cocks its head, decides to end this experiment in its own, inimitable style.

Even when it could still pass as a human male, it had enjoyed a flair for drama.

"...WELL BOYS, IT'S BEEN FUN..." The mocking Southern drawl reaches their ears several seconds *before* the emaciated form twists into William Stryker. "...BUT NOW..."

A blur, and Senator Robert Kelly stands in his place "...I THINK IT'S TIME I ADDRESSED THE MUTANT PROBLEM MORE DIRECTLY..." 

A blur, and it is Bobby Drake. "...AND MAKE THE TWO OF YOU..." 

-a blur, Magneto- "...GODS AMONGST INSECTS..." 

a beat and it returns to its true shape. "...EVEN IF ONLY THE ONES THAT FEED ON YOUR ROTTING CORPSES..."

-A casual flick of its claws, and Cerebero, quite unhurriedly, begins to tear itself apart around them.

 

* * * * To be... concluded!


	13. The Sun in Their Eyes

"All living animals, plants and insects are constantly changing,  
In response to all other living animals, plants and insects"  
(Michael Crichton)

 

"Unless an animal can perfectly mimic inedible objects, it must disguise its own edible outline.  
Many predators hunt by memorizing the shapes of their most edible prey,  
a technique known as 'Search Image'.  
(Paul Zbororwski, 'ANIMALS IN DISGUISE')

 

"Your body grows more beautiful  
with every move you make  
Your body grows more beautiful  
with every bite I take...  
You won't believe I love you  
It's too stupid for words  
So I lick your trembling lips  
And use your hands to feed the birds..."  
-'Mouth to Mouth' by THE GLOVE

 

"Oh God, Oh God... Must I die like this?"  
Jack Ketchum, 'OFF SEASON'

* * * 

 

[ _logan_ ]

-He winces as the voice catches fire in his mind again, echoing strongly in his brain and shrugging off any injuries it may have sustained from St Croix.

A picture forms in the Canadian's mind. He flashes on an image of himself, in the kitchen with Bobby when Stryker's SEALS launched their attack. 

He sees himself throwing both his arms out, knives extended. The image plays and replays behind his eyes, again and again.

-Arms splay out, knives burst forth-

-Cyclops gasps as a hot zephyr cards his hair, and suddenly his mind is looking upon Liberty Island, lost in the copper-smelling darkness of the Statue, and lost behind his lids. He remembers/hears a voice in his ear-

[ _scott when i tell you open your eyes_ ]

-And now a burning in Emplate's temples.

[ _you cant keep this up my power is eating you marius_ ]

It cocks its head. Indeed, the strange mutant can feel its shrunken dead heart beating insane time against its parchment chest, as though its ribcage is a prison cell and the red wet muscle a convict clamouring for egress.

"...NO MATTER, BITCH..." It snarls "...I ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH VALENTINES, ANYWAY..."

[ _marius how long can you survive without your respirators how long_ ]

"...LESS THAN TWO MINUTES..." It croaks, then looks astonished, as if it can't believe it just said what it did.

[ _sorry marius im two minutes hope long enough get reach help sorry_ ]

"...WHAT? YOUR SYNTAX IS GOING HAYWIRE, I DON'T UNDERSTA-"

[ _nowscottlogannownownow_ ]

* * * * 

 

-A red flash.

A metallic clang, like cymbals.

A rattling, keeling shriek that sounds like steam escaping from a kettle.

And it was done.

-After all the drama, all the machinations that they've been put through, Logan finds himself perversely disappointed that it has all come to a head with nothing to show for the experience in terms of blood. 

He'd come here expecting gore and ruin, and instead everything is over with two flares of light and two hollow noises, like the momentary daydream of an idle synaesthete.

Still, for the benefit of those with a less primal sense of closure than Logan first or last name unknown, we shall review.

The Red Flash:  
-as expected, had come from Cyclops. For the first time ever though, the beam shot calm and controlled from eyes unencumbered by visor, glasses or goggles- from eyes that were a striking almond shape and of an amazingly clear and beautiful blue. The voice rang in his head

[ _now_ ]

and with only a microsecond

-or two-

of hesitation Scott had turned his handsome face towards his Canadian lover and, using what had felt to him like the same muscles he might use to cross his eyes in jest, fired a full powered beam, thick and crackling, right at the other man.

The Clang of Cymbals:  
-Came from Logan. Still mentally in the kitchen with boxer-shorted Bobby, he'd suddenly felt a *flare* in his mind, and had spread his arms akimbo, claws extended, as he had at the mansion. He'd watched Scott turn towards him and trigger a blast, but experienced no fear. He trusted Scott completely. God, his eyes were so beautiful...

-Scott's beam slammed into Logan's extended claws with all their colossal force. Instead of melting them and the man behind them into so much blasted meat, however, there was a strange, incandescent glow at the point of contact. Logan's extended hands and claws formed a spectral, exotic bird of flesh and steel, and the glow surrounding his hands intensified until the bird spreads wings of glowing flame.

The bolt of deadly percussive energy struck the glowing knives extending from Logan's hands- and *bounced off* with a 

**(SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNGG!)**

Logan felt all the way up his arm bones, feeling as though he'd just tried to hit a home run with a medicine ball instead of a baseball-

-And of course, The Rattling, Keeling Shriek:  
Came from Emplate's beyond-raw throat as Cyclop's concussive blast, coupled with the energy from Wolverine's batting arms and the flaming feedback from she who still haunted this chamber- rebounded straight into its face and blew the entire array of tubes and respirators it possessed to shards of flying detritus which flew completely across the length of the room.

A long pause, then.

Emplate raises its hands to its face, finding its malformed features undamaged by the blast, but dismayingly naked, for the first time in god knows how long. It looks over at Scott and Logan, who return the gaze cooly, but not without some measure of guarded pity.

And then it begins to choke.

A horrible wheezing rattle issues from what remains of the lower mandible. Thick, clotting mucous pours from the ragged holes in its face where its features should be.

Its wheezing shriek begins to rise in both panic and pitch, but is cut off by a look of pure rage and hatred so pure it could have been tinctured and made into the world's foulest venom. 

Emplate glares at them, makes a mocking bow as though doffing an invisible hat, then charges towards the sheer drop at the edge of Dark Cerebro's catwalks and flings itself off, into space. 

It makes no further sound.

(Though there may have been a distant 'bamf' some seconds later, but if pressed, neither of the surviving Mutants could claim this with any degree of certainty)

* * * * 

 

Scott walks over to the edge of Dark Cerebro. His visor sits on a small piece of loose concrete, exactly, mathematically parallel to the sheer drop. It glows with a faint, fiery phosphoresence at the ear-triggers, so he knows who has found it and brought it here to him. He whispers a thank-you to her in his mind, unsure if she can hear now. Already he feels the backs of his eyes begin to burn as the strange metaphysical coating over the damaged section of his brain fades into the ether.

Visor in hand, he peers over the edge of the chasm, not really surprised when he sees nothing at its dim and far-distant base but rubble and the corpse of Jason Stryker, 143- ripe and bloated and crawling with feasting insects, so clearly the *real* 143.

He sees Logan walk up to him out of the corner of one soon-to-be deadly eye, and turns to him. The pair embrace for a long time, lips finding each other, then Logan silently takes the visor and places it, with a peculiar, gentle reverence, over Scott's face.

Logan offers Scott a hand to hold, taps the side of a temple with the other. "...Xavier's callin' us back, Bub. Shall we?"

A grin from the American. "The kids at the school are gonna be gossiping about this for weeks."

An answering smile from the shorter, gruffer Mutant, and a shrug. "...Nah; I have a feelin' they're all about to get an extremely long and complicated assignment in their Art Classes."

As the two Mutants link arms and go to find their way back to the Blackbird, a final warm breeze blows through both their minds.

[ _logan youd better be good to him or ill come back and kick your hairy ass_ ]

And they smile. Together.

 

* * * * End* * * *


	14. Epilogue: After Words

Mawson Island. The Southern-most land mass before the huge white continental fridge of Antarctica, and the last island in the region not locked into a prison of crystalline purity.

Deep inside an Australian scientific research station 

(the scientists were currently engaged in a much more intimate study of the Antarctic ocean than they might have chosen)

St John Allerdyce huffs hot-breath into his bitterly chilled hands and wishes, for the millionth and fifth time, that Erik would just finish the repairs to the helicopter and pinpointing the whereabouts of Victor and Mortimer and get out of here already.

("Look on that horizon, Dear Boy; Magnetic South! Such barren beauty addles the senses, doesn't it?!")

He did his best to keep them both warm at night

(Never Raven- though it certainly wouldn't be through lack of trying on her part- the first time Erik's worn, steely face had dissolved into that nest of blue spines, he'd almost immolated the entire room in a panicked rush to cover his nudity)

But he'd just as soon be out of here. All this cold and snow was bobbering

//shit!//

*bothering* him.

The youth trudged down to the furnace room *again*, flicking at his ever-present lighter absently and muttering profanities. Raven was strong enough to load the damn boiler, for fuck's sake- she could morph into Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger if she wanted to. Even Erik could do it remotely- the furnace *was* iron after all- but *no*, if it's a fire-related matter, get Allerdyce to do it.

Not that he really minded, that much. He liked to sit back from the blazing coal and metal and absorb the radiant heat into his bones, liked to watch the licking flames, will them into interesting shapes.

Just as long as he didn't catch himself making Drake's face out of them aga-

"Pyro."

"-Auugh, fuck!!" Allerdyce frantically lifted a hand and the flaming beams springing panicked to the load-bearing wall were extinguished. "-Who is..." his voice dried up.

"...Bobby?"

The dim figure stepped into the pool light from the furnace, a smile on that achingly lovely face.

"Hi, St John."

"...But how? How could you know...?"

Another wintery smile. "C'mon, St John; you and me were always practically in each other's pockets."

Both young men stepped forward until they were just outside kissing distance.

St John whispered, throatily. "...You shouldn't be here; if Magneto finds you he might make me... you shouldn't be here."

Bobby's hands are in his hair now. "'I'm not here for Lensherr; You're so much more powerful than him. So young. So strong."

The hand moves down to his face.

St John leans into it, then realizes. 

"Bobby, your hands aren't cold- well, they're room temperature, but not freezi- Raven?! If this is another of your jokes..."

A chuckle, even as the hand goes from stroking to gripping and then *chewing*, as that beautiful face becomes something horrible and alien.

"...NO, LITTLE FIREBUG" The thing purrs. "I'M LONG PAST JOKING; I'M JUST HERE... FOR A BITE TO EAT..."

Shortly thereafter, St John is cold again. But this time, he doesn't complain, even once.

 

\--------------------------end--------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> ...And we're done! I'm dipping my feet in the (X) gene pool of this fandom again shortly, with Logan and Scott on lead vocals again. And I don't think Emplate is finished with them, either...
> 
> This started off light and bantery and rapidly went very dark, almost without my input. It came about due to my enduring love for X2- still the best movie in the X-MEN franchise, and also my enduring love for James Marsden and his version of Cyclops, who the movies just. Keep on. Screwing. I thought he might as well get screwed in a fun way!
> 
> Dedication: As always, to Colton Haynes.


End file.
